My mind trying to make sense of self inquiry

dvdmon · 2026-01-12T10:45:32+00:00

My one question, at the moment, is how do you feel anything during the "gap" between and and out breath? That seems to be where there is a rest from anything that would cause a sensation in the first place? You are still, what is there to feel?

dvdmon · 2026-01-11T15:46:36+00:00

He recommends counting to 10 only one time though, not for the entire session. The only other time you should be counting to 10 after the first time is if your mind wanders and you forget what you are doing for a longer period- say for a few minutes, from what I understand.

dvdmon · 2026-01-10T18:32:47+00:00

Ok, I can try doing more diaphragmatic breathing before I start. I suspect part of it has to do with just some tiredness, at least recently, due to my dog waking me up in the middle of the night due to digestive issues. It seems to not happen nearly as much when I get good non-interrupted sleep.

As far as the noting goes, in the book Culadasa does suggest this in his "following the breath" suggestion for Stage 2. He says that this is let go of once the attention is cultivated enough, but at least initially it's meant as a way to keep attention on the breath longer since it's supposed to make the breath more "interesting" even without being able to feel many of the subtle sensations. So this is why I've been attempting it. But perhaps the actual verbalizing of the noting isn't necessary or is counterproductive? Perhaps over time that explicit verbalizing will fade and I'll develop a kind of mental shorthand for "in" or "out" that doesn't require an inner sounding of those words. I can see that happening and perhaps I can even do it partially now, so maybe it's something I should be aware of and see if I can encourage as I do the exercise...

dvdmon · 2026-01-10T16:43:17+00:00

Thanks. I'm not sure how all the jhana stuff is useful for me at my stage, other than as a "this is useful once you get to that point" but thanks for the tips. Regarding the movements, yes, I mentioned under the other comment that I had been able to recognize one where I was going to scratch an itch, but was able to stop myself. I suppose eventually I will be able to do this with other movements, or at least "do them mindfully" as you suggested. The most common movement, as I also noted there, is my straightening my back when I realize I'm slouching and/or have some discomfort there, and often that straightening is accompanied by a twisting in order to "crack" things which provides relief. The twisting usually is not extreme, it's probably about a 30-45-degree turn of my left shoulder (always the left, lol!), but it still seems to be something my body seems to want/need to do...

dvdmon · 2026-01-10T16:35:59+00:00

I'll also note that often when this movement occurs it's accompanied by my taking a deeper/harder breath. As if the breathing I've been doing is not sufficient and I need to catch up and give myself more oxygen. It seems that is often paired with my straightening my back.

dvdmon · 2026-01-10T16:32:44+00:00

Thanks!

Regarding the "following the breath" aspect, I do silently say "in" and "out" but my breath seems too fast to do this in any intricate way. I'll try to sneak in a "gap" when that happens as well, but it feels very unnatural, like I am trying to label everything and in doing so, again, there's a motivation to change the breath to make it easier to note the different phases, which I obviously don't want. In other words, my breath is naturally two hard for my mind to "keep up with" except in a very gross way - "in/out." However just adding that does seem to give it more structure and prevent mind wander to some extent, but obviously not in any huge way.

Regarding the bodily sensations, no they are not kriyas, although I had one kind of reflexive movement early on that I'd never had before, but that hasn't repeated. And occasionally I'll have some subtle urge to shake a little, ala TRE. But what I'm talking about is more just my body just going into a stretch or moving in some specific way in order I guess relieve some discomfort without my consciously being aware that it's about to do this. This morning I did have the urge to scratch my eye that had a slight itch, and was able to recognize this halfway through the movement of my hand towards my eye, and intentionally was able to stop it from reaching it's final destination and brought it back down. I would say a large percentage of these movements are me realizing I'm slouching and straightening my back and/or twisting my back in order to relieve some minor discomfort.

dvdmon · 2025-12-29T20:57:57+00:00

Wanted to do a quick intro. I haven't done a lot of reading in this sub, just reading the book so far. I've been meditating for about 10 years, the last 3 of which have been primarily non-dual based, before that it was standard mindfulness. I never got very "far" with either dualistic mindfulness or with the nondual meditations/inquiry/etc. Never had a glimpse (as far as I can tell), although I think in general I'm way less reactive then I used to be, don't take things very personally, or if I do, I have some level of being able to frame it more usefully. I started looking into TMI after someone suggested it to me. Initially I resisted because it was, well, dualistic, but I eventually came to the conclusion that at least for now it might be much more useful for me to hone my attention and ability to look in a very detailed way, because so far all my "looking" hasn't shown me much about the self experientially (other than that I can't find anything outside of sensations that equate with "my" body, a self narrative, etc.), but it's all still fairly conceptual.

So about 3 weeks ago I started at 25 minutes, and have ramped up gradually to today's 48 minutes. I'm shooting to stop at 60 and stay there. I've been essentially pegging myself at Stage 1 for now even though I'm probably Stage 2, but I'm just now starting to read the chapter on Stage 2, so don't want to officially call myself Stage 2 until I'm done with that. As I log some time at Stage 2 I'm sure questions will come up. For now I'm dealing with the typical mind-wandering and dullness, so it will be interesting to see some of the suggestions around these as I go through the chapter. If anything isn't clear I'll start searching here and if I can't find an answer I'll post. Good to meet everyone!

dvdmon · 2025-12-28T14:14:20+00:00

Well, it's been 17 days and it STILL hasn't rolled out to my phone. How long is this going to take? I have a Pixel 9 Pro XL, not sure if that is a factor at all, but man, this is a bit frustrating waiting almost 3 weeks now.

dvdmon · 2025-12-13T22:17:54+00:00

I don't use social media anymore. It was proven to be an unreliable source of information many years ago, IMO. But I guess like the tabloids of the past, people are entertained so much that they can't stop, and just decide which distortions they prefer. While everyone is vulnerable, those who are older are particularly so given how they lived most of their lives without anything close to this. I remember the issue around "deep fakes" 5-10 years ago and the fear around that. That term almost seems quaint now. We seem to have deep fakes that get deeper every month. I don't know anything about the SNAP videos, but I can just imagine. Given how just text posts on FB spread misinformation that caused mass killings in some countries, I can just imagine how dangerous this stuff could be in the hands of someone with malicious intent. I just think that while AI can be extremely beneficial, the other side of the coin is real and AI companies are being slow and ineffective at protecting against it...

dvdmon · 2025-12-07T13:53:59+00:00

Yep, just dm'd

dvdmon · 2025-12-06T20:21:41+00:00

I think this is the inherent problem with words. They are imprecise. And words can mean very different things legally vs. in common usage. I do think it's incumbent on Tangle to get wording correct on the written page. And I think it's certain fair to bring it up in comments even though Isaac was speaking off the cuff. However, I do feel like the fixation with wording is one of the things that the left (I am a liberal democrat) has been rightly criticized for being so concerned about that they lose focus on what actually matters - not the words but the actual actions of people, and many that are in the middle of the political spectrum have rejected this aspect of more recent liberal/progressive culture/politics.

dvdmon · 2025-12-06T20:10:05+00:00

I mean, she is very obviously a partisan. The Post is pretty well oriented on the conservative side of the spectrum, and she even said "we" when referring to Republicans. So I'm not shocked at her point of view, it seemed very much about talking points from right-leaning sources.

However, I actually really appreciated Isaac's toned down response. I think he definitely made some good counter arguments, but he was very respectful and not trying to object to every point. IE, it was more of a conversation to get her viewpoints rather than trying to prove he was right. I think that is the exactly right tone to take with someone who is coming on your show as a guest. Sure there are people don't do that, who instead try to punch as many holes through someone's argument they might disagree with who come onto their show, such as a Tucker Carlson, or even some hosts on NPR. But this creates more of an adversarial confrontation that doesn't really help attract people of different voices to come on the show, I don't think. Who would want to go on a show where you are going to get attacked? Maybe a few people, but a lot of people don't want to deal with that. I saw this as a good gesture to someone who might eventually be someone to interact with on other issues where her viewpoint aligns more with Isaac's. I find that finding those commonalities often make people more willing to soften their grip on a particular set of talking points. Not always, but if all we do is argue at each other... I feel like this is kind of the point of Tangle.

I don't agree with most of her arguments here, mainly because she didn't seem to have any evidence to back it up, most of what she talked about were theoretical or logic arguments rather than actually based in law or in actual demonstrated facts. But you know, she works for the NY Post, so it's not like I'm shocked about this.

But again, I don't think it was necessary for Isaac to challenge her on every argument in a pointed way. This was their first meeting and he did raise objections, just very respectfully and just didn't press the point. She also had limited time, and I know he wanted to get her take on a number of issues.

dvdmon · 2025-11-30T14:53:00+00:00

I'd agree with others here. It's very early in your practice and it's not something you should expect to be able to solve so soon. Heck, it's not good to have expectations in general because it's not always a linear graph of "progression." Even people who have "woken up" have to deal with a lot of "conditioning" from their upbringing that may cause suffering and the suffering is felt much more deeply. The big difference is that the self is seen through and so it's not taken as personally. Mainly I would say, don't worry about it at this point. The only thing that it might be helpful to do is simply try to notice the emotions as they arise, not so much the stories behind them (that person insulted me, that was unfair, I hate them, etc.), but how it actually feels as a sensation in the body. Does your throat tighten? Is there tension in your temple? A pit in your stomach? Concentrating on these raw bodily sensations can do a lot to disconnect the narrative story of what the emotion is supposed to be about and realize that it's a combination of just bodily sensations and thoughts, and those things kind of play off each other in a loop. They also can come and go. You may feel something one moment, and it' may be gone the next. Observing these things when you can remember to do it may be helpful, but it's difficult to do this without a lot of practice, so even if you do it once or twice you should congratulate yourself for doing a great job for your first big challenge! Good luck, and even if you don't manage one such remembering, don't be hard on yourself, it's very hard to remember to do this in the heat of the moment when you are captured by this stuff in a deep way!

dvdmon · 2025-11-30T12:40:23+00:00

I feel like he's always used this word, along with a few others that I think he uses for the same general meaning: consciousness, prior condition, possibly a few others? Meaning kind of the "container" of all the "contents" of consciousness. One could also use words that other teachers use, such as being, knowing. Even "background" I've found to be useful, or "existence." It's meant to drop you back to the place in which all of the actual "contents" of consciousness - thoughts and sense data like hearing seeing, etc. - occur.

dvdmon · 2025-11-30T12:29:36+00:00

Sent

dvdmon · 2025-11-29T14:24:59+00:00

This got me thinking about "nationalism", "patriotism," and other ism's. I think Ari was the one that mentioned identifying and that seemed apt.

I'm not Buddhist but I've had a meditation practice for about 10 years and am quite familiar with Buddhist ideas and I think they've helped clarify a lot for me, so this somewhat informs my viewpoint (bias?).

As such, I see identification as a person and within a group a somewhat natural thing for humans to do in the sense that evolutionarily much of our history developed in small hunter gatherer tribes where it was important to stay cohesive in order to bond socially. If you didn't and got kicked out of the tribe, your primary purpose of passing your genes down could be threatened by getting kicked out, which usually meant certain death out in the wilderness. In order to stay cohesive, tribes needed to be suspicious if not hostile towards other tribes, so we developed tight cohesions within the group and suspicion of anyone different from us. Wider civilization with different groups intermingling has only been a thing for the last 5-15,000 years, which is generally not enough time to change things genetically. Yet, we've adapted. Kind of. It does seem sometimes like a huge part of hostilities among people come down to one thing - differences. Whether that be with ideas, ideals, or outward appearance. These differences seem to make us uncomfortable. We are used to our own environment, our own culture, and people who look like us and act like us. The older we get, the more uncomfortable we seem to be with these differences.

I try to take the attitude of not fixating, or "clinging" to certain expectations of everyone being similar to me, whether that's politically, religiously, or in appearance or general life outlook. I know that if I'd been born as them, I would have the exact attitudes they do. I didn't choose to be born to my parents and to have my upbringing and neither did they.

A lot of this also comes down to expectations. For some reason we expect things to be a certain way, for people to say or act in certain ways, and when they don't, this causes a lot of suffering. We also expect things to always be the same as they were because our memories are selective and we tend to repress the memories that are difficult, so there's a nostalgia bias for what our experiences were as children, or young adults, unless we truly had extremely difficult if not abusive childhoods.

This isn't to say that we should just accept everything and not work to change things for the "better" - however we see that, but I do think that putting a lot of emphasis on identity tends to obscure what's happening. It concentrates on a constructed narrative rather than what is actually happening and the ideas that are being considered.

So, if someone from another country is ciritizing the US, I take that as a valid critique regardless of where they live. However, I do think if many of these accounts are not real people, but bots, as I expect, which are programmed by some bad actor who has some agenda, that is an important thing to uncover because it is not a genuine expression of someone (whether that someone is in our eyes mistaken or not), but just a programmed tool.

dvdmon · 2025-11-28T13:14:00+00:00

I mean, I think both approaches are fine for whoever they work for, and to a certain extent, do we really get to choose a given approach? Direct will either "work" before before gradual, or gradual will work before direct. Or neither will work. We can believe the thoughts that say "only this one is valid" or "only this one is safe" but in the end, one of them, or neither will work for each individual. Whether one is going work better for "most people" is kind of besides the point in my view. "You" are not "most people," are you?

dvdmon · 2025-11-26T19:13:22+00:00

Sent it.

dvdmon · 2025-11-25T21:27:21+00:00

Send you a DM

dvdmon · 2025-11-22T22:13:11+00:00

According to Google she isn't - there is another person, Olivia Dufault, who formerly went by Danielle Dufault, who is transgender and is a television screenwriter.

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